Sullivan: The Blue Jays currently have the second lowest negative WAR in MLB.

[TwistedLogic]

http://i.gyazo.com/09fd31a914038c78d7e2441694e488cb.png

 

It's that easy. There's no disagreement over the strategy. The separator tends to

be player evaluation. Which players are good? Which players will remain good?

Which players will be the most good? The teams that have the most good players

tend to be the strongest teams. You might not know why you bothered to read

these paragraphs.

 

When it comes to team-building, so much of the emphasis is on accumulating as

many good players as possible. And that's good, that's important, because that's

the biggest key to winning games. But there's another side of this, one that tends

to get ignored. It's important to have good players, but it's also important to not

have *bad* players. That might seem like saying the same thing. They're related,

but they aren't identical.

 

For example, let's consider two hypothetical mini-teams. Team A has three

players. Two of those players are both +4. The third player is 0. Team B also has

three players. Two of those players are both +4. The third player is -1. Of Team

A and Team B, you could say each has a pair of good players. But Team B also

has that bad player, relative to Team A's 0. So by this simple math, Team A

comes out at +8, and Team B comes out at +7. The good players are critical, but

a bad player still made a difference.

 

Reality isn't quite that clean, in that teams are much bigger and we don't have

perfect measures of performance, but we do have Wins Above Replacement, or

WAR. So for the sake of this example, let's trust those 2015 WAR figures. It's

pretty easy to navigate over to FanGraphs and figure out which teams have

generated the most and the least total WAR. It's tougher to break that down. How

much of that WAR is coming from good players, and how much negative WAR is

coming from bad players? It's the latter I'm going to focus on here -- enough

attention is already paid to the good-player side of the equation.

 

You're going to see a table below, of all 30 teams, and 2015 negative WAR totals.

The thing about WAR is it comes with a really convenient baseline, the level of

performance expected from a so-called replacement-level player. Ideally, no

playing time ever goes to guys who aren't at least replacement-level, but we

don't live in an ideal world, as you can just ask the Phillies. So I've gone through

all the 2015 data, and I've found all the players with a WAR below 0, and I've

sorted them by team. Then it was just adding up numbers.

 

Some of this is about depth. Some of this is about not needing depth. Some of

this is luck. But the general idea is a simple one: Which teams have gotten the

most negative performances, from players they've played? And which teams

have spent the least time putting up with subpar performances?

 

http://i.imgur.com/FuGUHQD.png

 

Maybe that doesn't seem like much of a spread to you, but remember that the

units here are wins, full wins, and we're not even to the halfway point of the

season. The average is -3.4, meaning at the top you've got an advantage of

more than two wins, and at the bottom a deficit of three wins. Not that the

Phillies should really count as evidence of anything -- they were never going to

be competitive -- but we can examine the non-Phillies results.

 

And what's most interesting to me are the Astros. They might be the best

example of the concept. By negative WAR, or really by avoiding negative WAR,

the Astros rank No. 1 in baseball. By positive WAR, they're No. 15, right in the

middle of the pack. Obviously, the good players are important, but the Astros

have also gotten a lift from the bottom. They haven't had bad players bringing

them down. They've been at least adequate all over the place, and when they've

needed help, they've been able to dig in the system.

 

The Astros have had surface-level ability, and depth. There's Hank Conger,

behind Jason Castro. There's been Carlos Correa, behind Marwin Gonzalez, behind

Jed Lowrie. Preston Tucker has done an admirable job after being pressed into

service. Domingo Santana has come up. Lance McCullers has been outstanding in

the rotation. Vincent Velasquez seems to be at least adequate. And so on. The

bullpen's deep. There are still players on the farm. By negative WAR, the Astros

are separated from the Angels by two wins. From the A's by three wins. From the

Rangers by somewhere in between.

 

And funny enough, when I looked at this same thing last October, examining the

2012-2014 window, the Astros came in dead last. Which means in a way, this

happened quickly. The Astros had to put up with a lot of crap, but they've

suddenly arrived, and they've arrived with depth to support a more-than-adequate

front line. I wouldn't quite call them "complete," but they aren't far away.

 

Right behind the Astros are the Blue Jays and Yankees, who have been modest

surprises. I don't mean to just skip over them, so, let's all take a moment. Great.

But now we have to move on, because I can't keep writing forever. I wanted to

highlight the Royals, in fourth. Right now, the Royals lead the Twins by 3.5 games

in the AL Central. They lead the Tigers by 6 games. Just by avoiding negative

WAR, the Royals have given themselves a four-game advantage over both of

those rivals. By positive WAR, the Tigers and Royals are nearly even.

 

The Royals might not really be a team full of All-Stars, but they have been

mostly a team full of at least adequate players. Rare has been the instance that

the Royals have put up with a player actively dragging them down. It's a type of

strength, avoiding weakness. Granted, in the Tigers' case, a contributor here has

been the awful performance from Victor Martinez. That presumably has had to

do with injury, and it's not like they could easily sit Martinez down. But it still

informs the point. It's not just that Martinez hasn't been good. It's that he's been

bad, and the Tigers have played him. So they ended up in a situation the Royals

didn't face.

 

There are eight different teams with no more than 2 negative WAR. And there

are seven different teams with at least 5 negative WAR. Three of them have

been intending to compete, and this helps explain why they've been

disappointments. The Mariners have gotten a lot of bad contributions from

seemingly decent players. The Tigers' strength is more about front-line players,

not depth. And the White Sox just seemed like an incomplete team. They have

an excellent core, but almost nothing around it, and this is what can happen.

The White Sox would be in the race, if the negatives were just less negative.

Instead, they're going to have to

regroup.

 

Don't take this to mean more than it does. Ultimately, the most important thing

is assembling a group of good players. But they can't all be good players. And

when the good players run out, you want to be able to avoid having to play the

bad ones. Some of that is just going to be up to luck, but some of that, you can

prepare for. There's no such thing as being too prepared.

[Olerud363]

Team still suxxxxxxxxx

 

The negative wARZZZ don't mean much... or not having the negative WARZZZ

 

We need starting pitching. Good starters and some defense brings championships.

 

That's the forumlar for champion seasons. Good starters, Ace, a little defense, and a clutch batter

 

you can negative WARzzz or not have them, don't matter much either way.

[Olerud363]

The negative wARZZZ don't mean much... or not having the negative WARZZZ

 

We need starting pitching. Good starters and some defense brings championships.

 

That's the forumlar for champion seasons. Good starters, Ace, a little defense, and a clutch batter

 

you can negative WARzzz or not have them, don't matter much either way.

 

Do you think Cito Gaston or Beeston ever cared about negative WARZZZZ

 

Joe Carter had negative WARZZZZ but still drove in 100.

[Olerud363]

Driving in 100 RBI gets you on the level if excellence though. That and smoking cigars.

 

I looked it up on fangraphs... I knew Joe Carter's last season with the Jays was pretty bad, so I figured he might of had a negative WAR that year.

 

What was crazy is that he had a negative WAR each year from 95-97. And the Jays still thought he was a guy to build around instead of Olerud.

 

After being freed from Gaston (pull the ball or Brumfield plays) Olerud went 4.4, 8.1 and 5.8...

 

Olerud actually had two 8 WAR seasons (93 and 98)... and was platooned in between them.

[BigCecil]

I looked it up on fangraphs... I knew Joe Carter's last season with the Jays was pretty bad, so I figured he might of had a negative WAR that year.

 

What was crazy is that he had a negative WAR each year from 95-97. And the Jays still thought he was a guy to build around instead of Olerud.

 

After being freed from Gaston (pull the ball or Brumfield plays) Olerud went 4.4, 8.1 and 5.8...

 

Olerud actually had two 8 WAR seasons (93 and 98)... and was platooned in between them.

 

Olerud > Carter - I''ll forever be grateful to Carter for his 93 smash and other hits but he is one of the most over rated players we have ever had.

 

To appreciate how good Olerud was you have to look back through his stats. He put up some unassumingly staggering numbers for a long time.

 

Should have never sat him to play Carter at 1st.

[TheHurl]

Do you think Cito Gaston or Beeston ever cared about negative WARZZZZ

 

Joe Carter had negative WARZZZZ but still drove in 100.

 

It is impressive though that of the 1723 seasons of 100 RBI's or more only 63 have been achieved with a wRC of less than 100. Joe Carter had three of them including the lowest of all time at 72. Only 2 others were sub 80 and only like 12 were sub 90.